Vehicles operating in an autonomous mode (e.g. driverless) can relieve the driver from some driving-related responsibilities. When operating in an autonomous mode, the vehicle can navigate to various locations using onboard sensors, allowing the vehicle to travel with minimal human interaction or in some cases without any passengers.
Motion planning and control are critical operations in autonomous driving. When operating the ADV, a system may provide mechanisms that may require the system to gather information regarding various characteristics of the ADV. In some cases, these characteristics may be determined using various on-board sensors. However, in other instances, characteristics may not be known to the system. Moreover, this information may be required by the system in order to provide autonomous control mechanisms for the ADV. Accordingly, there is a need to provide the ability for an ADV to derive certain characteristics related to providing autonomous control.